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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nFacebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg addresses a crowd at Facebook Headquarters in Menlo Park in 2014. The memoir \u201cCareless People\u201d claims Sandberg coerced employees into \u201csleepovers.\u201dAlison Yin\/Invision for Facebook\/AP Images<\/em><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The first thing a tell-all needs is juicy things to tell, and Sarah Wynn-Williams at least has those.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In her memoir \u201cCareless People,\u201d which gets its name from a line in \u201cThe Great Gatsby\u201d describing how Tom and Daisy \u201clet other people clean up the mess they had made,\u201d the former director of global public policy at Facebook has a chapter called \u201cLean in and Lie Back.\u201d Here, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg; a young assistant named Sadie whom Sandberg treats as a \u201clittle doll\u201d or \u201clady-in-waiting,\u201d complete with hair-petting and lap-sitting duties; Wynn-Williams and others are in a private jet flying back from Davos, Switzerland. A pouty Sandberg repeatedly tells Wynn-Williams to \u201ccome to bed\u201d \u2014 the single large bed in the craft \u2014 for a sleepover. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wynn-Williams really doesn\u2019t want to and tries to pawn the job off on Sadie, whose last name isn\u2019t given. Then, in a move that combines \u201cMean Girls\u201d and a toddler having a bedtime tantrum, Sandberg says, \u201cSadie\u2019s slept over lots of times and I\u2019m not asking Sadie. I\u2019m asking you.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The best revelations in the book peek behind the smooth digital facades of Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg to the actual people warped by increasingly infinite power, money and isolation \u2014 and they\u2019re jaw-dropping enough that on Wednesday, March 12, Facebook parent company Meta won a temporary legal injunction<\/a> to halt promotion and distribution of the book. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism Meta claimed Wynn-Williams violated a non-disparagement clause in her 2017 severance agreement, which resulted in the emergency ruling in the social media company\u2019s favor effectively prohibiting Wynn-Williams\u2019 ability to market the book. But her publisher, Flatiron Books, has moved forward with distribution, and the memoir has taken off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The content more than backs up the commotion surrounding its release. However entitled you already thought these overlords were, they\u2019re more so, according to the author. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wynn-Williams, who worked at the company from 2011 to 2017, details decisions about unstable regimes or vulnerable youths that lead to preventable deaths, with responses that aren\u2019t even blinks. There\u2019s the meeting about an organ donation initiative when an oblivious Sandberg asks, \u201cDo you mean to tell me that if my four-year-old was dying and the only thing that would save her was a new kidney, that I couldn\u2019t fly to Mexico and get one and put it in my handbag?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Elsewhere, she praises Filipina nannies as \u201cservice-oriented\u201d and expects her Facebook employees \u2014 the female ones, naturally \u2014 to do unpaid labor promoting her 2013 book \u201cLean In.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during a joint hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., in 2018. Facebook parent company Meta won a temporary legal injunction this week to halt promotion and distribution of the memoir \u201cCareless People,\u201d which alleges bad behavior by the company\u2019s leaders. Saul Loeb\/AFP via Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Wynn-Williams\u2019 telling, Zuckerberg is so used to his sycophants letting him win at board games that he just thinks he\u2019s amazing at them, and when she challenges him for real, his short-circuited brain can only conclude she\u2019s cheating. He\u2019s the kind of person who believes \u201csomething more important might come up\u201d than being present for the birth of his child, or who, when one of his employees gets jailed in a foreign country, doesn\u2019t work to free that person but uses the situation to draft a self-aggrandizing Facebook post \u2014 one that could put the jailed employee at even more risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such leaders create a workplace culture, in Wynn-Williams\u2019 telling, where moms get critical performance reviews when co-workers can hear babies during Zoom meetings or when they\u2019re insufficiently responsive on email when in a coma on maternity leave. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe expectation at Facebook is that mothering is invisible, and the more skilled you are, the more invisible it is,\u201d she writes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLean In\u201d author and former Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg speaks at the Fortune Global Forum conference in San Francisco in 2015. A new memoir by a former Facebook employee describes Sandberg and other company leadership as being warped by power, money and isolation.Liz Hafalia\/S.F. Chronicle<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s an office where women with \u201cdirector\u201d in their title are expected to get on their hands and knees to look for items their male superiors have dropped or get fired after they complain about their boss\u2019 sexual harassment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a place of moral turpitude \u2014 that enables human rights violations in Asia, that grants China surveillance power over all Facebook users, that targets ads to teens based on their emotional state and is proud of doing so. \u201cWe shout this from the rooftops,\u201d an advertising exec tells the author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCareless People\u201d author Sarah Wynn-Williams.Flatiron Books<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n But if Wynn-Williams has dishy \u201call\u201d in her tell-all, her telling often muddies it. Her overreliance on sentence fragments makes for a choppy ride through a paragraph. It\u2019s like getting continuously kicked off the back of a horse and having to remount. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And not only does she tell instead of show \u2014 abstracting instead of supplying the detail that could empower you to draw conclusions yourself \u2014 she repeats points as if speaking to a remedial class. Does a single page need to inform us both that Sandberg and others \u201cruthlessly manage their own labor, extracting as much work out of each day as humanly possible\u201d and that \u201cher ferocious work ethic and endurance are astounding\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n A tell-all about a toxic workplace needs still another ingredient to succeed, and that\u2019s a teller who strikes a tricky balance. We seek a narrator far enough outside of the cult to truly see and critique it, but not one so intent on settling scores that we can\u2019t trust her. At the same time, she can\u2019t oversell her virtues, and this is where Wynn-Williams, who worked in diplomacy before joining Facebook, falters. The subtext of chapter after chapter \u2014 whether the subject is China, Myanmar, U.S. elections or teen users\u2019 mental health \u2014 is: \u201cIf only Facebook had listened to Sarah!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s also been speculated that fact-checking of these accounts, which are based on memories of the author\u2019s experiences from years past, was sparse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark Zuckerberg delivers the keynote address at the Facebook F8 developers conference in San Jose in 2018. A memoir by a former Facebook employee claims the company culture included women being fired if they complain about sexual harassment. Paul Chinn\/S.F. Chronicle<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n You might object that maybe Wynn-Williams really was the lone person farsighted enough to predict how Facebook could become as powerful as nation-states, guided only by the caprices of some ill-informed, callous billionaires accountable to no one. Even so, it doesn\u2019t always make for great reading. The book, instead, reads less as memoir than as cover letter for her next gig. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The closest she gets to sounding sinful like the rest of us is when she admits, \u201cWhen a woman I work with closely expresses surprise upon learning I have a child, she tells me, \u2018Good job! \u2019 \u2014 openly admiring of the fact that she\u2019d had no idea \u2014 and I feel a flush of pride.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet perhaps this tightrope that expos\u00e9 authors must walk is just like the impossible demands we place on female corporate managers: Be relatable but also respectable. Be a feminist, but only at the right times. Hype yourself, but don\u2019t be pushy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n About Opinion<\/p>\n\n\n\n Guest opinions in Open Forum and Insight<\/strong> are produced by writers with expertise, personal experience or original insights on a subject of interest to our readers. Their views do not necessarily reflect<\/strong> the opinion of The Chronicle editorial board, which is committed to providing a diversity of ideas to our readership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read more about our transparency and ethics policies<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n If the goal of all those unwritten rules is to get more women to become like Zuckerberg and Sandberg, \u201cCareless People\u201d paints the apex of digital power as a lonely, unhappy, dehumanizing place. With any luck, some readers will choose to lean away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Correction: <\/strong>An earlier version of this review misstated the date Meta won the temporary legal injunction to halt promotion and distribution of the book. It was Wednesday, March 12, the day after the memoir\u2019s release.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Reach Lily Janiak: ljaniak@sfchronicle.com<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n March 20, 2025|Updated March 23, 2025 5:58 p.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lily Janiak<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n THEATER CRITIC<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lily Janiak joined the San Francisco Chronicle as theater critic in May 2016. Previously, her writing appeared in Theatre Bay Area, American Theatre, SF Weekly, the Village Voice and HowlRound. A Michigan native whose childhood also took her to Tennessee and Texas, she holds a BA in theater studies from Yale and an MA in drama from San Francisco State. She served on the jury for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" However entitled you already thought these people were, they\u2019re more so, according to Sarah Wynn-Williams in her memoir \u201cCareless People.\u201d By Lily Janiak,Theater criticUpdated March 23, 2025 (SFChronicle.com) Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg addresses a crowd at Facebook Headquarters in Menlo Park in 2014. The memoir \u201cCareless People\u201d claims Sandberg coerced… Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bathtubbulletin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-100.png\")
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<\/strong>By Sarah Wynn-Williams
(<\/em>Flatiron Books; 400 pages; $32.99)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bathtubbulletin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-101.png\")
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